1.2 Cloud 2.0 clients and connectivity — Technology and challenges

With the dramatically increasing use of mobile and portable devices, the need for computation has intensified, motivating the transformation of traditional static services (Web and storage) to evolve toward distributed Web services, forming Cloud 1.0; in this process, the evolution into the Smart Device Era involved many changes: stationary computing devices are going mobile, standalone devices are becoming connected, and peer-to-peer communication (email) extending to many-to-many (social networking). Two of the biggest enablers for Cloud 1.0 have been clients such as Smartphones and tablets, connected through wired and wireless networks. Embedded within each of these clients are the CPU and GPU processors needed to enable consumer applications and mobile human-interface devices (HIDs). To satisfy the ever-growing computational requirements, mobile CPU clock frequencies have extended into the GHz region. To avoid this barrier, mobile clients are driving the downscaling of process technology while motivating the rapid rise of multi-core CPUs and GPUs. In this process, new architectures involving asymmetric-CPU and octa-cores are emerging. As well, investment is pouring into the hardware/software (HW/SW) infrastructure to provide adaptive power management, thermal throttling, and efficient heterogeneous multiprocessing, all to enable maximum core usage and energy efficiency within the tight thermal limits of the Smartphone and tablet domains.